Apr 18 2012

Bones – Season 1

I remember watching the very first episode of Bones on tv here sometime around 2006. Unfortunately I didn’t get to watch many other episodes as the timings usually conflicted with Saturday night English Premier League football live matches. Still I did later get to see a few episodes of subsequent seasons and enjoyed the bickering yet friendly partnership between the FBI agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and famed Forensic Anthropologist / author Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel) of the Jeffersonian Institute. Dr. Brennan was asked to join Agent Booth on solving murder cases by examining the dead remains of murder victims and soon a permanent partnership was formed with Booth & Brennan also assisted by her team at the Jeffersonian – entomologist Dr. Jack Hodgins (T J Thyne), Dr. Zack Addy (Eric Millegan) who started out as Brennan’s graduate student & assistant and remains at the lab to examine bones while Brennan is on the field with Booth & forensic artist, computer software designer Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin), who is also Brennan’s best friend. Dr. Daniel Goodman (Jonathan Adams) a former archaeologist turned administrator, who is also the director of the Jeffersonian Institute is also part of the team, albeit in a supervisory role.

Season 1 sees Dr. Brennan detained at the airport for carrying a human skull in her bag; the detention was a ploy by FBI Agent Booth to get her to help on a case. Although they have had prior working relationship, Brennan will only join in if she is allowed full access to the case – which means going out on field as well. Booth agrees and the full fledged partnership is formed. The banter & bickering is funny due to an important ongoing dynamic between Brennan and Booth is their disagreement about science and faith. Brennan argues for science, evidence, atheism. Booth argues for faith, God, and the unproven. These two actors have magnificent chemistry between them. Despite the gruesome death and images of corpses, brains, other organs and decaying flesh & skeletons the show remains lighthearted due to the characters being fully fleshed out and hilarity ensues on all fronts.

The laughs are also provided by conspiracy theorist Dr. Hodgins and young genius Dr. Addy, who indulge in experiments in the lab which may not have the desired effect. Also Brennan is hilarious despite her ‘no humour’ demeanour – she is blatantly & bluntly honest and lacks proper social skills and has little to no knowledge of normal human pursuits like movies, tv, cartoon characters or sports. They also must face the fact that they inadvertently stayed the execution of death-row inmate Howard Epps. Howard had an estimated IQ of 180 and was raised by an overly religious mother who bathed him in ammonia after he went out on dates as a youngster because she felt that the girls were all “loose”. hey were successful in delaying his execution pending a further review of the evidence, but this was only after discovering, after tracing the location where the murder he was accused of had been committed, that he was not only guilty, but had killed multiple other victims; the execution was only delayed to try him for the other murders. He also claimed that it was after he read Dr. Brennan’s book saw a way out when he learned that she was working with Booth, who caught him the first time.

The team also get stuck in the lab during Christmas when a biological contamination at the lab means total shutdown with Brennan, Booth, Addy, Hodgins, Angela & Goodman all still inside. Due to quarantine taking 2 days to be completed, they have to spend Christmas eve at the lab where they make presents for each other. We also learn that Booth has a son and Angela’s dad is Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top! Brennan, who was raised in foster care after her parents both left when she was 15 and her brother Russ also abandoned her (thinking she would do better without him). The mother is dead and the two siblings reunite and find a message from their father telling them not to look for him. This will lead us to second season’s recurring theme of Brennan finding her father.

By Roshan • Television • 3